So much to do, so much to do, so much to do. Izzie paced the hallways of the library, unable to resist the urge to nervously play the piccolo that hovered near her withers. After a particularly stern glance from an archivist she attempted to stow it away so quickly in her satchel that it clattered to the floor, earning her another withering l. Nothing was going her way today. Here she was, trying to turn in a routine report quickly before scuttling back to the unit, sticking to mostly unused wings of the court and the library as if she was afraid of her own shadow.
But it was Marisol she was avoiding.
They hadn't spoken much since she'd ascended to Sovereign - and why would she want to talk to her, anyway? (stupid, stupid, stupid). Who had time for a flightless little bird when they were busy soaring high, higher, almost eclipsing the sun. Marisol had always been golden to her, long before she'd been crowned. Acerbic and rough, yet respectable. A true Halcyon.
Hey, hey, hey idiot. Focus. Focus! Izzie wrenched herself away from her daydreams, shuffling the reams of parchment in front of her. As the pages flew before her eyes the mare committed each word to memory, just in case... Rifling so quickly, she tore the edge of one page and smeared the ink on another. Useless. She winced and cussed under her breath, earning her another glare from seemingly the only other presence in the library. Thoroughly cowed, she lowered her head and made her way towards the very opposite end of the cavernous space. Every step echoed. It seemed like she was an interloper no matter the venue. Why couldn't she fit in here, where she was supposed to belong? Ismene felt lonelier than on her solo flight here. Getting anywhere took forever - she had to take so many breaks to ensure her nerves were steeled enough for a safe flight. And yet now that she had arrived, she couldn't wait to leave.
Being in court felt itchy. She was always looking over her shoulder, trying to make sure she was either being a good little bard or attentive scribe. Although she liked the feeling of being truly in the mix - there was always something happening here - she couldn't shake the uneasiness of being, well, in the mix. Perhaps she'd feel differently if she had a more open space to work. Ismene didn't particularly like confined spaces. She preferred to work in open markets, the center of the training grounds: places where there was so much energy, so many other horses, she could easily get lost. Resigning herself to the stuffiness of the library, Izzie stared hard at the pages in front of her as she transcribed the parts she'd mussed up. Open skies lingered in the back of her mind as she worked.
01-04-2020, 12:52 AM - This post was last modified: 01-04-2020, 12:52 AM by Ismene
Next to the barracks, the library is one of Marisol’s favorite places to be. It is often the only part of the Court proper that isn’t bustling with horrible noise, filled with bodies, or generally raucous; when the world is too loud and oppressive, there is nowhere better to go. Nowhere else to disappear.
So at times like these—when the rain is pouring down outside in heavy, gelid sheets, when even the weakest winter sun is nowhere to be found, and when Marisol’s heart is keening in her chest, pained and swollen, like the noise of an injured dog—she does not have to think twice about where to go. Or even whether she should. Instead she rises from her desk in the citadel, legs tingling as the muscles unwind from their hours of sitting, and flits down the stairs and out into the gloom.
The streets are awash in a patina of rain: green, copper, and deep, dark blue. It is as beautiful as it is gloomy, like an oil painting Marisol can’t help shuddering as she steps outside. Winter is in full swing, and she is not made for this weather, the biting wind and half-frozen rain—her eyes are stinging against the cold, and every step is a little more stilted than the last. But like any good soldier, she pushes through, head pulled to her chest, wings folded over her back for warmth, short hair rustled by the ferocious wind.
The cold is fearsome, but in some ways it feels good. Like starting a fight. Like remembering what it really is to be alive.
By the time Marisol pushes her way into the library, she looks like something carved out of the snowbanks. Her dark skin is frosted with rain and the beginnings of snow; her feathers are iced together, her joints are stiff, and when she stops in the foyer and shakes out her tail, it loosens a little cascade of icy crystals that go clattering to the floor. The Commander’s body aches with the feeling of disuse. But, thank Vespera, the library is just as empty as she could have hoped, and blissfully quiet. No clattering. No fighting. Hardly even the sound of breathing to interrupt the so-slowly turned pages of Terrastella’s tomes.
Peace.
Marisol breathes a little sigh of relief. The exhale floods out of her, frostbite and sea salt. She steps toward the back of the room—
And there is the sound of clattering, then of pages ripping, sounds that grate against her skull, and half Marisol’s face screws up in disappointment. Her lip curls; for a moment she is inexplicably exasperated, a dull ache deep in the chest as she dares to think of who it might be ruining her respite this time.
But when she dares to look, it’s only Izzie, a dainty red blotch in the back corner of the study. Marisol is surprised to hear herself inhale sharply; on her it is a sound that means, and feels, pleased. Suddenly she is light again (if, maybe, a little hesitant). Relief washes through her chest in a few faint waves.
“Ismene,”the Sovereign calls, warmly, and not loud enough to bother the more studious readers in the room, as she makes her way toward the scribe.
And all the small, winged anxieties took to the air in her chest at the sound of Marisol's voice. Like moths drawn to her heart instead of a flame, they threw themselves against her vital organ with the same insistence. It was so sudden and intense that she felt like she might throw up. Izzie flicked an ear backwards in acknowledgement, her mouth opening and closing without making a sound as stared at the pages in front of her. If she could just get through this without making a mistake, perhaps talking to Marisol for a moment would feel like a reward and not a cruel punishment. She didn't want the Sovereign to see her fail. Her determination renewed, Izzie blazed through the last few pages that she had to re-transcribe. Ismene stared so intently that she could feel her eyes well up from concentration and her stubborn unwillingness to blink.
There. It was finished. A soft musical shuffling of the papers and a firm, final tap on the edge of a nearby table consolidated her work. Breathing out a long-held gasp, Ismene laid them flat and finally turned to address Marisol. "Mari," she began, before a sick look flashed across her face. "Mmmm," she continued, stilling butchering the moment.
"Marisol. Or would you prefer a title now?" Ismene finally said. Her own words sounded strange and unintelligent in the face of the Sovereign's confident, dulcet tones. Had she detected a moment of pleasure at their meeting? Impossible. Marisol was much too busy to be doing things like missing her (or thinking about her at all). Izzie looked over her shoulder and lifted a wing to gesture towards the papers. "Just dropping off a report and then I'll be on my way." Of course, she hadn't been outside for a good few hours now. The icy winds would keep her grounded until the precipitation trickled to a halt. Ismene wasn't a strong flyer in the best circumstances. Taking to the skies in a winter squall was a near death sentence, if only for the severe anxiety it would cause her. A panic attack would send her spiraling straight towards the ground, limbs limp and unresponsive.
A spattering of hail clinked against one of the library's large windows. Izzie turned and stared, her ears saddling to the sides in disappointment. "Or not. Looks like I'll be stuck here for a while." Winter was her least favorite season. Usually she spend the entire time cloistered with the unit, dutifully taking notes until springtime, but they'd had such a spate of clear weather lately that the brilliant blue winter skies had seemed irresistibly safe. Still turned towards the window, almost unable to look at her, Izzie continued: "I imagine things have been busy. How are you holding up?"
Izzie’s reaction isn’t quite what she expected. Despite herself, Marisol is a little taken aback, a little defensive; her feelings are a little hurt by the way the red pegasus refuses to look up at her, how her crimson ears flatten back, the nervous ticking at the corner of her downturned mouth. They’ve known each other for years, been friends since they were kids. And yet the cadet doesn’t look happy to see her.
She seems irritated, actually.
Mari continues across the floor, but trepidation is weighing her down. Her strides are slower and shorter, tail swishing absentmindedly behind her, her attempt at a smile colored with uncertainty; the Commander’s chest has become heavy with something like dread, or perhaps it is closer to insecurity. Why are they suddenly estranged? What has she done to earn the scribe’s distrust?
Or is this just what it is like to become Sovereign? Perhaps it is the curse of all the rulers who have disappeared before her. Now that Marisol is thinking of them, she realizes with sense of rising hopelessness that she cannot name the friends they kept as king and queen. (Did they keep any in the first place?) They’d all had their own problems with friendship. Their own loneliness, their own foolishness in love.
With a blink, she realizes she has come to a stop as the scribe’s side. She lets out a whoosh of breath, a sudden, strained exhale.
“Absolutely not,” Mari responds, voice slow, and dark, and a little roughened by laughter; the edge of her mouth curls into a faint smile. “No titles, or I’m giving your good bunk to someone else.”
Her tone is unusually light. It sounds strange coming from her and feels even worse, an ill-fitting cloak. But since ascending to sovereign, she’s said things that sound and feel strange more often than she’s really comfortable with. The act of it is has almost become second nature. Lying, or something like it, has quickly grown into a talent.
As hail begins to beat harder against the window, Marisol takes a seat at the scribe’s side. Izzie’s yellow eyes are still turned nervously to the window, focused with unneeded intensity on the pouring rain, as if she’d rather look at anything and anyone but the Commander, who is in turn watching her with a mixture of interest and confusion. (And maybe a little bit of distress.)
She chooses to ignore the last question. Something in her is worried that, if pressed, answering truthfully would make something inside her just—snap.
Ismene couldn't help but chuckle at Marisol's quip. She had a habit of that - making her laugh - even when she was sick with nerves. Of course, the Sovereign was likely still blissfully unawares of Izzie's affections. They'd been separated for some time now on different paths and their old easy banter had grown curiously out of sync. Every glance felt too long, every subtle physical shift a sign of definite interest or definite disdain. Just existing in the same space as her was exhausting.
"The bunk isn't that good. If you can even believe it, I find it too small," Ismene chirped, her eyes still trained on the window pane. There was a frenetic energy between the pair of them that keyed Izzie in on the fact that somehow, some way, she was disappointing her Sovereign. The thought was enough to make her almost physically ill. She was suddenly overwhelmed with the fact that she couldn't do anything right, not even something as banal as... whatever this was. A crush? Ismene wasn't sure what it was, only that her stomach was about to jump ship and come tumbling out head-over-tail from her mouth. This is normal. Regular. This is Marisol. Just Marisol. They had trained together once. They'd shared secrets once.
Ismene flashed through her childhood on loop. Marisol was around every corner. This was normal. A final shiver passed through her body, as if a particularly insistent fly had landed on her withers, and Izzie seemed to settle back into herself. She turned and faced Marisol for the first time, tilting her head up so that she could look her in the eyes. "I was just turning in this report when the ink smudged. I had to replicate it or I'm sure I'd get a tongue-lashing or two. I have to do something right around here," she said woefully. "And then the weather took a turn for the worst. Once it clears I'll head back..."Unless, unless, unless. Ismene left the suggestion of a question. She'd head back unless Marisol invited her to stay, if she only asked.
Hearing Izzie’s laugh relaxes her somewhat. For the brief moment that it rings through the still air, they are back to normalcy. They are friends again, or something like it. The world is easy and quiet, peaceful. It’s the way things were before all… this. Something beats its wings in Marisol’s chest. It’s thrilling and lighter than air, and the breeze it stirs up rises all the way into Mari’s throat, then the back of her mouth, the cold of it settling like frost in between her teeth.
Outside, the wind is howling, dark and savage, through the streets. Hail beats insistently against the windows, like a child throwing its fists in a tantrum; as Mari watches the weather rage outside, she is afraid, for just a sliver of a second, that the stained glass which colors the street outside might break. In her mind’s eye, she can already see it breaking: cracks growing like spiderwebs, colored glass seeping into the streets. Art destroyed by the roiling storm. Her dark ears flicker rapidly as the clinking of rain and ice grows louder and faster, drowning out the way the scribe’s laugh fades slowly into silence. Or maybe just helping it along.
“I can’t,” Mari counters, lackadaisical. “Believe it, I mean.” Letting out a little sigh, the Commander focuses on trying for a posture of relaxation, legs folded neatly against her sides and wings laid against her back; by the time Izzie finally turns to look at her (even though her yellow gaze is still skittish), she looks and feels about ready to doze off, lulled into sleepiness by the tattoo of rain on the streets and and the gentle sound of pages being shuffled throughout the room.
But now is not the time or place for a nap, so she works hard to stay awake, blinking up at Ismene with drowsy gray eyes. The note of sorrow—is it even self-disgust?—in the scribe’s voice makes something in Mari’s hear squeeze and hurt, a pang of sympathy, or, at worst, just pity. “You realize,” the sovereign offers finally, “your chances of getting a tongue-lashing are significantly lower now that I’m in charge of them.”
She smiles just a little, a dry and wily thing. Real humor is hard to come by these days. For a moment she muses on the right thing to say next, the right way to convince Ismene to stay.
But when she glances outside again at the storm, she doesn’t think it’ll be a problem.
She saw the pity flash in Marisol's eyes for just a moment and she felt reduced by another few inches. It made her want to do better, be better. Kinder to herself. Ismene closed her eyes for a moment and glanced back at the pages, assuring they were in the proper order. Realistically, she was good at this. She had near-perfect recall and neat, tight script. Filling a page came naturally to her, just as retelling the most popular stories by way of neat little trills on her piccolo interspersed between spoken words did. Even the dark, rude little ditties that she put together about some of the antics in the barracks and fumbles on the training fields were popular among the cadets. As long as she kept them entertained and laughing most of them overlooked her lack of physical prowess and didn't ask many questions; that was quite alright with her.
Self-deprecation had become her weapon. If Marisol disarmed her so expertly with just a glance, how would she defend herself? She would be strewn bare. "I might be small but I have needs," she quipped. "Not enough room for my wings. I think they underestimate me." When you hate yourself everyone knows it. You wear it like a stench, undetectable to your own nose because you're so filthy and mired in it, and then when you clear out a room and are left standing alone... you wonder why they've all fled from the unmistakable smell of self-loathing. You are given what you want, or what you believe that you deserve: the worst of everything. "But it's fine. I can squeeze," she laughed. Ismene could feel the lightness too, kindling between them. A small flame. Just a little bit of warmth.
She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth at Marisol's words. "I would never ask for special treatment. Let the tongue-lashings commence." It wouldn't feel right. The abuse of some of the ranked Halcyon felt deserved, even welcomed. It kept her sharp. They knew she was always writing, always composing - any officer that antagonized her could safely expect their name to appear in a new dirty rhyme to be hummed during drills. "I promise, I can take care of myself... there," she announced, arranging the papers finally on the table. Ismene gave them a final look before she eyed the empty space at Marisol's side. There was more warmth to be found there. The winds were blowing a chill through the library straight through the delicate glass of the window. Izzie gathered her courage, every last shred of it. "Do you mind if I...?" Without waiting for a response, she settled into the inviting space by her side. Oh. A giddy warmth raced up her spine to the tips of her ears. "Will you be visiting the grounds soon?" I haven't left yet and I miss you already.
Marisol stretches over the length of the cushion beneath her like a cat. For a moment, everything in her is stretched out and languid, from bones to muscle to the slow and lazy beating of her heart: for a moment she is really relaxed, the tension unspooling all at once, like so much thread. For a moment the world is bearable. The gray light isn’t quite enough to keep her eyes open. It is calm and soft, and the beating of the almost-hail on the glass outside makes a noise like a drum or the tattoo of a heartbeat. A noise that could lull her to sleep, if she let it. Maybe even if she didn’t mean to.
I can squeeze, Izzie says. Mari half-smiles, a drawling curl of the lip that flashes just the barest slice of teeth. She wants to say something. Or, as the seconds tick on, anything. something fitting for a girl in her position, not too friendly but not totally frigid, not overly familiar or not familiar at all. There are so many rules now, even more than the army of self-imposed ones she had already been living under since being titled Commander. Queen just adds another layer to it.
She watches with sleepy, dark eyes as the scribe rearranges her papers. A stack is squared against the edge of the table, then taken apart again. Two sheafs are laid on top of one another. A feather pen goes rolling off the table. Mari’s ear flickers as she hears it hit the floor, but she is distracted by a dull, childish dread as she looks over the thickness of the stack and realizes, too slowly, she’s the one who’ll have to look over and organize them later. A little sigh escapes her then. A whoof of warm breath that stirs the curled edges of the papers.
But then the ochre-eyed pegasus settles into Marisol’s side, permission only half-asked for, and she is at once quite distracted from the minute shifting of the reports still laid across the table. Izzie’s skin against hers is strikingly warm. Her hair curls up against Marisol’s nose, the mixed red-and-white strands smelling of dust and old ink and something else made for comfort. The Commander blinks and leans slightly back in sharp surprise—something like electricity, both exciting and uncomfortable, jolts right through her and pricks the hairs on the back of her neck.
“It’s hard to visit,” Mari sighs, half joking and half despairing, “when I already live there."
![[Image: ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda...jvUop12efQ]](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c175b84a-409b-40aa-8b86-49ed65b989ee/ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda550e.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2MxNzViODRhLTQwOWItNDBhYS04Yjg2LTQ5ZWQ2NWI5ODllZVwvZGRnNnF1eS05ZDE1ZGFiNS0zMzljLTRiMDktOGI1Ny0yMGE5OWZkYTU1MGUucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.j-t9RuUsmMyaVL-O1rvZqbyyPYdOvtjHLjvUop12efQ)
